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Anti-Gay Regnerus Scandal: Editor James Wright Must Disclose Wilcox’s Role

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June 10, 2012.

That was the publication date for two studies twinned in anti-gay-rights political purpose, one by Mark Regnerus, the other by Loren Marks.

The studies were published in the Elsevier journal Social Science Research. That journal’s editor-in-chief is James Wright.

The Regnerus study’s funders immediately began using the two studies as heavily artillery in their War Against Gays.

The Regnerus study’s chief funder is The Witherspoon Institute, which is joined at the hip to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).

In their early days, Witherspoon and NOM shared an office at 20 Nassau Street, Suite 242 in Princeton, New Jersey. The two anti-gay-rights group remain joined at the hip: Witherspoon president Luis Tellez has a been a NOM board member since NOM was founded by its current mastermind Robert P. George, who also is a Witherspoon senior fellow.

The Witherspoon connection to Elsevier’s journal Social Science Research is Witherspoon’s W. Bradford Wilcox, Director of Witherspoon’s program on “Marriage, Family and Democracy” and an editorial board member of Social Science Research.

The connections between NOM founder and mastermind Robert George and Brad Wilcox do not stop at those observed in the Witherspoon Institute; Wilcox also is a member of Princeton University’s James Madison Society, which is headed by Robert George.

It almost surely was not mere coincidence that — with Wilcox on the Social Science Research editorial board — the twinned Marks and Regnerus studies appeared simultaneously, the Regnerus study through very suspicious rush circumstances in time for pernicious anti-gay-rights political exploitation in the 2012 elections.

No speculation whatsoever is necessary to prove that Social Science Research editor James Wright is attempting to hide his editorial board member Wilcox’s connections to the unethical publication of the Regnerus study through corrupt peer review.

Witherspoon’s 2010 IRS 990 forms define Regnerus’s New Family Structures Study as a project of Wilcox’s Witherspoon program.

Whereas Regnerus in his published study alleges that his funders played no role in study analyses, Wilcox was issued, and signed, a consulting contract for data analysis on the Regnerus study. Wilcox’s data analysis contract is the second contract at this link.

Wright intends to publish, in November, another non-peer-reviewed article by Regnerus — a response to his critics — which Regnerus titles — “Additional Analyses” — in which Regnerus again lies by saying that his funders have not been involved in data analysis.

An e-mail to Wright asking if he would be correcting that falsehood did not receive the courtesy of a reply.

Meanwhile, there are grounds for concern that Regnerus’s data set is entirely invalid, has been improperly manipulated, or both.

Regnerus claims that his data set is statistically accurate for the whole population of the United States. Yet one of his “findings” is that — out of 2,988 respondents between the ages of 18 and 39 — 620 (six-hundred and twenty) have never once in their lives masturbated. Regarding childhood sexual victimization, Regnerus phrased a question about it, such that there is no way for anybody to know who allegedly sexually victimized his study respondents as children. Yet, his “finding” is that children of “lesbian mothers” are abused at a rate of 23% — nearly double that for the next highest family structure in his study, that of step families, reported at 12%.

Previous studies of lesbian parents consistently have shown low child sex abuse rates. And, the Witherspoon/NOM/FRC cronies involved with the genesis, carrying out, and political promotions of the Regnerus study have long histories of demonizing gay people by conflating homosexuals with pedophiles, a known falsehood.

There is a blockade against third party sociologists being able to evaluate the Wilcox/Regnerus presentation of the study’s “findings,” because Regnerus has not yet released his raw data. The appearance is that Regnerus is withholding his raw data until after the November elections, in line with his funders’ political goals for his study. Regnerus should immediately apologize for his lie about his funders in relation to his data analyses, and he should immediately release his raw data so that third party sociologists can fully evaluate his anti-gay defamation that explicitly exists — in his vague and un-interpretable finding — that children of “lesbian mothers” are sexually abused at a rate of 23%.

The central problem with Elsevier and Regnerus is that objectively viewed, there simply is no basis for trust that the perpetrators are not lying about their product, Regnerus’s study.

It is dismaying that the article by Regnerus that Wright intends to publish in November is titled “Additional Analyses” and that the article says that Regnerus’s funders did not participate in the analyses, when we know for a fact that they did.

Regnerus and his business partner enablers in Elsevier know no shame.

The Regnerus Additional Analyses document is packed full of additional lies and subterfuges. For example, Regnerus purports to answer to the observation that many of his study subjects’ parents were closet cases who entered into sham opposite gender marriages or relationships.  He says that that may or may not be the case, but that the study was not designed to make that determination. He then says, that for those cases in his study, where a study respondent’s mother had the respondent child with a man, then separated from the man and had a same-sex relationship, he — pay very, very careful attention to his — Regnerus says that he would “hesitate to assert that a same-sex relationship — especially if relatively brief — is indicative of a fixed sexual orientation.” (Bolding added).

But meanwhile — in documented reality — Regnerus did not at all hesitate to assert that his study subjects’ mothers were “lesbian mothers.” In his published study, he said that the question his study answers is: “Do the children of gay and lesbian parents look comparable to those of their heterosexual counterparts?” Throughout his published study, Regnerus refers to his subjects’ mothers who had same-sex relationships as “lesbian mothers.”

To deflect the criticism of his study, wherein it is surmised, by those doing the criticism, that most of his study’s parents judged to be gay parents were closet cases in sham heterosexual marriages, Regnerus tells a lie, saying that he hesitates to label his study subjects’ parents as lesbian mothers, even though, in his study, he absolutely did label them as lesbian mothers, with no hesitation whatsoever.

And, there is a reason Regnerus is telling this lie; if the main conclusion of his study were that anti-gay prejudice must be eliminated, to prevent the negative fallout that occurs when closet cases enter sham heterosexual marriages and have children, Regnerus’s study funders would not have the anti-gay-rights political weapon that they commissioned from Regnerus for $785,000.

Regnerus lies through his teeth about his study, while talking out both sides of his gay-bashing bigot mouth.

I repeat: The central problem with Elsevier and Regnerus is that objectively viewed, there simply is no basis for trust that the perpetrators are not lying about their product, Regnerus’s study.

At the end of June, 2012, after a group of over 200 Ph.D.s and M.D.s sent Social Science Research a letter expressing concerns about the twinned Marks and Regnerus studies, emphasizing concerns about the suspicious publication process of the Regnerus submission, and concerns that the Regnerus submission does not support its conclusions, editor James Wright assigned editorial board member Darren Sherkat to an audit of the publication of the studies.

That audit was a sham, with Sherkat admitting that the peer review of the Regnerus study was not valid, yet holding nobody accountable for the gross dereliction of science publishing duty represented by the corrupt publication process for the study. To the contrary, Sherkat invents excuses for all of the Social Science Research malefactors, including that because they are busy in their lives, they cannot be expected to carry out their duties as peer reviewers responsibly.

In a July 16, 2012 e-mail, this reporter asked Sherkat what he would do, if he found that the peer reviewers of the Regnerus study had conflicts of interest. Sherkat said: “I would advise the editor and editorial board that the paper should be retracted and resubmitted for a full review (that is normal procedure in all sciences).”  Contradicting that message, Sherkat told interviewer Michael Bajaras, in the wake of his sham audit: “normatively in sociology we don’t retract papers.”

In other words, to keep us quiet, Sherkat said that if he found conflicts of interest, he would tell Wright and the editorial board that the Regnerus study should be retracted, because “that is normal procedure in all sciences,” but then after he did in fact find conflicts of interest, he contradicted his statement about retraction being normal in cases of conflicts of interest, and alleged that “normatively in sociology we don’t retract papers.”  Unless Sherkat believes that sociology is not a science, his two contradictory statements can not be reconciled with each other.

Sherkat’s sham audit does not once mention that Regnerus’s Witherspoon funding agent representative Brad Wilcox sits on the editorial board of Social Science Research and that some of his anti-gay-rights cronies were allowed to do peer review and published commentaries about the study.  That is to say, Sherkat’s sham audit left very serious, essential facts of the matter, including multiple conflicts of interest, hidden from the public view.

Moreover, Wright intends to publish, in November, a Letter from the Editor about the Regnerus hoax. In his letter, Wright seeks to discredit me. I had reported, accurately, that on July 15, Sherkat told me in an e-mail: “Yes, the peer review process failed here, and you can quote me on that.”

But Wright in his letter accuses me of promoting Sherkat’s statement about peer review failure as being something “much more sinister.” He then includes, in his letter-from-the-editor, quotes from his SSR corporate toady Sherkat, in which quotes Sherkat attempts to make light of his on-the-record statement, absurdly claiming that peer review failure does not really mean that the peer review failed.

Sherkat additionally had told me: “How did this study get through peer review? The peers are right wing Christianists!

Regnerus’s funding agent representative, who also is Wright‘s Social Science Research editorial board member Brad Wilcox, certainly can be classified as a “right wing Christianist.” And, according to all of the assembled documentation and evidence, Wilcox was permitted to peer review one, and possibly both of the Marks and Regnerus studies. In his article The Fact of Life and Marriage: Social Science and the Vindication of Christian Moral Teaching,” Wilcox argues against contraception.

It could hardly be more obvious than it is, that Wilcox/Regnerus are abusing social science to attempt to achieve a “vindication of Christian moral teaching,” at the expense of gay human beings defamed through their invalid study that was only published through corrupt, insider, study-funder-connected, “right-wing-Christianist” peer review that let glaring scientific failings through into publication.

Ironically, before we had uncovered the connections between Wilcox and the corrupt publication of the Marks and Regnerus studies, Sherkat on July 17 said in an e-mail that “Wilcox most prominently” should be pressured by activists for his anti-gay hate mongering.

It is true that Wilcox is a bad actor and should be pressured. Yet, the real accountability for the publishing hoax involved with the Regnerus study is on the shoulders of the publisher, Elsevier, and Elsevier’s Social Science Research editor James Wright.

Wright has yet to acknowledge — and to give the public full details and documentation about — Wilcox’s involvement in this scandal. Wright has assembled various commentaries in support of Regnerus for publication in November; Wilcox’s name is not once mentioned in those upcoming articles.

An e-mail sent to Wright asking if he would be disclosing Wilcox’s connection to the Regnerus study hoax went without the courtesy of a reply.

With relentless determination, we must demand that James Wright disclose everything known about Wilcox and the Marks and Regnerus studies. Beyond that, the right thing for Elsevier and James Wright to do is to retract the Regnerus study from publication and to put it through valid peer review prior to any eventual future republication.

In a July 15 e-mail, Elsevier’s Social Science Research editorial board member Darren Sherkat said:  “I want to thank you and everyone else in the activist community for keeping this on the front burner.”

To a sign a petition telling Elsevier officials to retract the Regnerus study, go here.

New York City-based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT-interest by-line has appeared on Advocate.com, PoliticusUSA.com, The New York Blade, Queerty.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.

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News

‘A Lot of Empty Seats’: What Reporters Are Seeing and Saying About Trump’s Final Rallies

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Win or lose on Election Day, it’s unlikely the 78-year old Donald Trump will ever hold another presidential campaign rally again, and yet some of his supporters over the past week have stopped showing up for his final tour, leading reporters on several networks to mention there are “a lot of empty seats.”

Who will win the presidential election is anyone’s guess, but for the Republican nominee coming to the end of his third campaign, some expected more people would be out to get one last rush of the MAGA experience.

“Very low energy,” is how Mother Jones’ D.C. bureau chief David Corn described Trump’s rally Monday in Reading, Pennsylvania—a must-win state both candidates have been focusing on.

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NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard, who says he’s been covering Trump since 2015, notes Trump’s first rally on the last day before Election Day is just 70 percent full—and Trump was 40 minutes late.

And he talked about the “far smaller crowds” they’ve been seeing, including this one in North Carolina.

“I wanna show you guys real fast what this crowd looks like,” Hillyard told MSNBC viewers. “We’re looking at about a capacity, about 70% full here, and for nine years … we have talked about the enthusiasm in the masses that have come out for Trump’s rallies, time and again, even at his politically lowest points, including in 2022.”

“I can’t tell you exactly why, but in this final week we have seen far smaller crowds. We were in Greensboro, North Carolina, where just a few thousand people. Macon, Georgia, just a few thousand people yesterday. What does that mean ultimately, you can only discern so much from what crowd sizes look like, but interestingly, for the first time since I’ve been covering Donald Trump since 2015, there’s been us in the press that have been looking around questioning why the crowd sizes have been less than what we are accustomed to.”

Biden White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt, from his personal account on X responded: “The act got old.”

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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein posted video from Trump’s Sunday rally in Macon, Georgia.

Revealing just how tired Trump’s supporters have, the comedy team of The Good Liars, who frequently go to Trump rallies and interview his supporters, on Monday caught several people holding Trump signs leaving but his rally early.

The Lincoln Project posted a video, originally posted by Hillyard, remarking, “This is how the MAGA movement is dying, like a bad club when the lights come on.”

Another Trump rally today with “a lot of empty seats.”

A CNN rep-orter for that same rally agreed: “a lot of empty seats.”

Democratic former U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill noted that a Trump rally on Saturday also had “a lot of empty seats.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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Trump ‘Bat Signals’ Proud Boys as Extremist Groups Deliver ‘Harbinger of Potential Chaos’

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Donald Trump over the past few weeks has occasionally been discarding his iconic blue suit, red tie, and red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, and instead wearing a black suit, gold tie, and black and gold MAGA hat. Black and gold are the colors of the far-right group the Proud Boys, who “instigated critical breaches of the Capitol” during the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was handed a sentence last year of “22 years in prison for orchestrating a failed plot to keep Donald Trump in power after the Republican lost the 2020 election.”

Months before the insurrection trump had infamously signaled, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”

“The Proud Boys are back in the news today,” wrote Rolling Stone senior writer Tim Dickinson. “Trump is not only bat signaling to the fight club with a black and gold MAGA hat — he’s campaigning for a far-right congressional candidate who had a Proud Boy on payroll.”

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Dickinson pointed to his reporting on Republican Joe Kent, a “far-right candidate for the House, with connections to white nationalists,” who has “extremist views and affiliations, including reportedly paying a Proud Boy as a consultant.”

Attorney Tristan Snell, who helped lead New York’s successful $25 million prosecution in the Trump University case, warns: “MAGA’s colors have always been red and white. Yet Trump is suddenly wearing black and gold MAGA hats — and even wore a black suit and gold tie the other day, rather than his habitual blue suit and red tie. The Proud Boys colors are black and gold. THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE.”

Calling it “a harbinger of potential chaos,” The New York Times on Monday reports: “Groups backing former President Donald J. Trump recently sent messages to organize poll watchers to be ready to dispute votes in Democratic areas. Some posted images of armed men standing up for their rights to recruit for their cause. Others spread conspiracy theories that anything less than a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a miscarriage of justice worthy of revolt.”

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One post, “from an Ohio chapter of the Proud Boys, the far-right organization that was instrumental in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol,” read: “The day is fast approaching when fence sitting will no longer be possible.”

“You will either stand with the resistance or take a knee and willingly accept the yoke of tyranny and oppression.”

Pointing to “the growth and increased sophistication of the election denialism movement,” The Times reports its “analysis of more than one million messages across nearly 50 Telegram channels with over 500,000 members found a sprawling and interconnected movement intended to question the credibility of the presidential election, interfere with the voting process and potentially dispute the outcome.”

Posts from groups like the Proud Boys, “questioned why states might not be able to fully tally election results on election night and repeated misleading claims about voter registration numbers in Michigan. In one video, a truck with a Confederate flag chased after immigrant children, with a caption reading: ‘1/20/25: Trump is sworn in as President. 1/21/25: Me and the Proud Boys begin the deportation.’”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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‘Dire Implications’: Trump’s Possible Vaccine Ban Could Spark US, Global Health Crisis

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Over the weekend Donald Trump said he is considering a ban on not just vaccine mandates, but vaccines themselves—an extension of his embrace of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The ex-president also said he is considering RFK Jr.’s declaration that he would immediately ban fluoride treatments in public water, which protect about two out of three Americans, according to the CDC.

NBC News’ Dasha Burns spoke with Trump on Sunday. She reports, “I asked if banning certain vaccines might be on the table. Former President Trump said, ‘I’m going to talk to him,’ meaning Kennedy, ‘talk to other people and I’ll make a decision, but he’s a very talented guy and has strong views.’ So it could really have a massive impact on how our government functions in terms of health should the former president win and give Kennedy a big role here.”

Trump, as of publication time, has a 53-47 chance of winning the White House, FiveThirtyEight reports. He is expected to put RFK Jr., a known AIDS denialist and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and purveyor of vaccine misinformation who has likened the use of vaccines to the “holocaust,” in charge of all public health agencies and public health policies, should Trump win election this week.

Kennedy in 2021 said, “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated.”

One week ago Sunday, at Trump’s now-infamous Madison Square Garden rally, the ex-president promised to let RFK Jr. “go wild.”

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“I’m gonna let him go wild on health. I’m gonna let him go wild on the food. I’m gonna let him go wild on the medicines,” Trump told supporters. Two days later, Kennedy said: “The key that President Trump has promised me is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others, and then also the USDA.”

Across the board, modern-day vaccines have eradicated or nearly eradicated diseases that have killed millions. How would putting an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist in charge of determining public health policy for a nation, and the world, work out?

Felix Richter, a data journalist for Statistia in 2022 wrote, “Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows just how effective vaccines have been in all but eradicating major diseases in the United States. In 2021, there were no reported cases of small pox, diphteria and paralytic polio for example, compared to an annual average of 29,005 cases, 21,053 cases and 16,316 cases in the 20th century, respectively.”

“And even though progress in eradicating measles has stalled in recent years (due in part to growing vaccine skepticism), its morbidity is nowhere near the annual case load seen in the 20th century, when half a million people were infected in an average year. Its prevalence has fallen by more than 99 percent due to vaccinations, along with a whole host of other diseases such as pertussis (whooping cough), mumps and rubella.”

Kennedy had a history of gravitating to areas where vaccines have been controversial.

In 2015, The Sacramento Bee reported, “prominent vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrived at the Sacramento screening of a film linking autism to the vaccine preservative thimerosal and warned that public health officials cannot be trusted.” His appearance came as “lawmakers [were] preparing to vote on a bill blocking parents from skipping vaccinations for their children,” which “was prompted by soaring exemption rates in some schools districts and outbreaks of long-dormant diseases like measles and whooping cough.”

Last year, The Associated Press called Kennedy’s anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), “a multimillion-dollar misinformation engine.”

In that deep-dive report, the AP also revealed that “Kennedy’s role in legitimizing anti-vaccine activism has not been limited to the U.S. Perhaps the most well-known example was in 2019 on the Pacific island nation of Samoa.”

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“That year, dozens of children died of measles. Many factors led to the wave of deaths, including medical mistakes and poor decisions by government authorities. But people involved in the response who spoke to AP said Kennedy and the anti-vaccine activists he supported made things worse,” the AP reported. “In June 2019, Kennedy and his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, visited Samoa, a trip Kennedy later wrote was arranged by Edwin Tamasese, a Samoan local anti-vaccine influencer.”

“Vaccine rates had plummeted after two children died in 2018 from a measles vaccine that a nurse had incorrectly mixed with a muscle relaxant,” the AP noted, but Kennedy “was treated as a distinguished guest, traveling in a government vehicle, meeting with the prime minister and, according to Kennedy, many health officials and the health minister. He also met with anti-vaccine activists, including Tamasese and another well-known influencer, Taylor Winterstein, who posted a photograph of herself and Kennedy on her Instagram.”

“A few months later, a measles epidemic broke out in Samoa, killing 83 people, mostly infants and children in a population of about 200,000. Public health officials said at the time that anti-vaccine misinformation had made the nation vulnerable.”

Last year, The Autism Science Foundation (ASF) reported: “There is no correlation between autism and vaccines. This has been confirmed through dozens of scientific studies examining different types of vaccines and different vaccine timing schedules. Researchers have also studied thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in many vaccines, to see if it had any relation to autism. The results are clear: The data show no relationship between vaccines, thimerosal and autism.”

There are other ways to look at how anti-vaccine polices and beliefs affect populations.

Lat month, The Associated Press reported that “Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year.”

“There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.” In Wisconsin, for example, “there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.”

An Idaho public health department has banned its practitioners from administering the COVID vaccine.

Last week the AP reported that a “regional public health department in Idaho is no longer providing COVID-19 vaccines to residents in six counties after a narrow decision by its board.”

“Southwest District Health appears to be the first in the nation to be restricted from giving COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccinations are an essential function of a public health department,” the AP added. “Demand for COVID vaccines in the health district has declined — with 1,601 given in 2021 to 64 so far in 2024. The same is true for other vaccines: Idaho has the highest childhood vaccination exemption rate in the nation, and last year, the Southwest District Health Department rushed to contain a rare measles outbreak that sickened 10.”

The UK’s award-wining i newspaper warns if the U.S. bans vaccines, it could spark an international health crisis.

“A US ban on vaccines would have ‘dire implications’ for Americans and could put vulnerable Britons at greater risk of harm, a leading UK-based expert has said.”

“For example, the resurgence of diseases like measles and polio, which had been largely eradicated in the US, could occur. The 2019 measles outbreaks, fuelled by vaccine hesitancy, serve as a stark reminder of this risk,” Kirsty Le Doare, Professor of Vaccinology and Immunology at St Georges University of London, told the i.

“Internationally, countries like the UK could see increased vulnerability. If the US stops vaccinating, it might lead to a rise in infections that could cross borders, impacting global health. For instance, a decline in US vaccination rates could affect herd immunity in neighbouring countries, leading to outbreaks that strain resources and public health systems,” Professor Le Doare added. “A US ban could disrupt supply chains and funding for vaccine research, impacting vaccination efforts in developing nations where access is already limited. This could ultimately stall progress on global health initiatives.”

Banning vaccines and fluoride are just two of the possible looming attacks on Americans’ healthcare under a Trump presidency. Last week, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said he and Trump want to “take a blowtorch to the regulatory state,” and the entire U.S. healthcare system needed to be deregulated, and a “free market” system implemented. When asked by an attendee at a Pennsylvania event for a local GOP candidate if that meant “No ObamaCare?” Johnson replied, “No Obamacare,” explaining how Trump wants to “go big” in removing regulations. He later tried to backtrack, by saying that killing ObamaCare was not what he meant, but Trump has repeatedly not only said he wants to repeal ObamaCare, he has tried several times.

Dr. Syra Madad, an epidemiologist, told CNN putting RFK Jr. in charge of Americans’ health is “dangerous.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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